TOWNSEND’S MIDDLE NAME

For a full half minute neither spoke and there was no sound but the heartless clanking of the padlock as Townsend shook it. There was no deception there—it was locked tight.

“Let’s walk around it,” said Townsend.

They reconnoitered about the little wooden building almost too dumbfounded to speak. Townsend glanced in through a side window.

“Look in there,” he said.

“Is he in there—dead?” Pee-wee asked in his dramatic whisper.

“No, we’re out here dead,” said Townsend.

Pee-wee stood on tiptoe and beheld a frightful sight. There was Lizzie, apparently repaired and ready for departure. Upon the rear seat reposed a greasy bundle—bacon. Cans of beans and salmon and spaghetti lay close by. The bag of rice nestled close to the bottle of molasses, as it should have done, since they always joined forces to create the luscious rice cake. The wire sticker with which Pee-wee stabbed his rice cakes to the heart, now stuck up out of some cavern in the threadbare upholstery and pointed at Pee-wee, as if in mockery.

“Dead?” moaned Townsend. “In another hour I’ll be dead.”

“Do you see the raisins?” Pee-wee asked. “Over there in the corner? I was going to mix them up in—”

“Have a heart, Kid.”

“I can see the end of a banana too. Do you see the toaster? What are we going to do? It makes me hungrier, doesn’t it you?”

“Come away,” said Townsend; “don’t look.” But Pee-wee’s departing gaze still lingered. “I see the egg powder,” he said; “right next to the fruit crackers, do you see it?”

Townsend stopped his ears, withdrew and sat down on the grass. Famished as he was, he could not repress a laugh.

“How about some sassafras and birch bark, Kid?” he said. “Scouts can’t starve.”

“I can see the two ears of corn on the floor,” said Pee-wee, still standing on tiptoe. “I was going to roast them.”

“How about some nice herbs? Browned in the pan?” Townsend asked.

“I wasn’t talking about scouts except when they’re lost,” said Pee-wee. “That shows how much sense you have. Are we in the North Woods? Answer me that—are we in the North Woods? Scouts have to have resources, don’t they?”

“Yes, but ours are all locked in there,” said Townsend.

“We have to find out where the man lives,” said Pee-wee; “he lives in the village; I’m going to find him.”

“All right, I’ll leave everything to you, Kid, because you have charge of the eats. If you don’t find him, anything you want to cook will be all right—some nice boiled grass or fried roots—anything.”

Pee-wee gave one more wistful look into the garage, then departed in search of its owner. He returned with the cheerful tidings that the man lived seven miles away in Tiddyville and that he always closed up at six o’clock. He had further ascertained that the man had no telephone.

“I suppose he thought we live somewhere around here and that we’ll call to-morrow,” said Townsend. “Guess he thought we wouldn’t be back to-night anyway. Well, we’ve got a dollar and a quarter on hand, and a dollar twenty goes to our absent friend. That leaves a nickel—”

“There aren’t any stores anyway,” said Pee-wee, disgruntled.

“Well, then,” said Townsend, spinning the quarter into the air, “what are we going to do? Beg at a farm? Or spend this man’s money buying something of a farmer? Or are we going to be scouts? Not hot air scouts but real, honest-to-goodness scouts. You said I wasn’t much on scouting; said you’d teach me some things if I was only your unknown pal. Well, how about it?” he asked, still spinning the quarter in the air. “Are we going to stand here grouching and looking in that window like a couple of hoodlums rubbering in a bakery shop window? Or are we going to be scouts? What do you say? Shall we beat it into the woods and get supper? How about you?”

“I’ve got an inspiration!” shouted Pee-wee. “We don’t have to eat bark. I know real mushrooms when I see them and there are lots and lots and lots and lots of them only you’ve got to know them!”

“Now you’re shouting,” said Townsend. “You were only talking a little while ago.”

“When was I only talking?” Pee-wee demanded.

“On the way to the river.”

“I was shouting then,” he said.

“Well, then you’re screaming now. Did I ever tell you my middle name, Kid? It’s mushrooms.”